Top image is from Mattias Inks. Click on the image to see it bigger.
- Black Widow, Scarce Resources And High-Stakes Stories Linda Holmes argues – and I agree – that the biggest problem with sexism in the new Avengers movie is that Black Widow is the only female lead character, which makes whatever they do with her character feel like a statement about women in general.
- The Unit of Caring on misandry and structural power: “I tag ‘misandry cw’ for hatred/contempt of men expressed specifically in a way that exploits systemic power dynamics. So a woman abusing a man isn’t misandry, but dismissal of men who have been violently abused because ‘men are always the abuser’ or ‘women can’t be violent’ or ‘what are you, weak and pathetic?’ reflects harmful attitudes toward men that are a consequence of structural power.”
- Study finds fat acceptance blogs can improve health outcomes (From 2012, and not proof positive of anything, but might be a useful link next time someone tells you fat acceptance is about people wanting an excuse to lie on the sofa eating McDonalds take-out all day, not that there’s anything wrong with that).
- The Myth of Wealthy Men and Beautiful Women – The Atlantic
- The conclusive, expert guide to saving Twitter from its trolls – The Washington Post
- Bloggingheads.tv debate about free expression on campus, between lefty professor Angus Johnston and Reason magazine writer Robby Soave. Although some of Johnston’s points seemed questionable to me, on the whole it seems to me he had by far the stronger case. But then again, I’m biased.
- A Response to Christina Hoff Sommers | (Speaking of Angus Johnston.)
- This idea for how to create more housing in cities with enormously high demand, like San Francisco – basically, open up what are now streets for development into residential or multi-use buildings, turn the sidewalks into European style avenues, and let the free market sort out parking – seems wonderful to me.
- Basic parenting gets fathers a gold star, and other things I learned on paternity leave – Vox
- Enough With the Holocaust Books for Children! – Tablet Magazine
- Restorative Justice: The Evidence — Report Draws Attention to RJ in the UK. “Restorative Justice” is an alternative approach to adversarial trials and to punitive responses to crime. I don’t think it’s right for every case, but it should in of our society’s toolbox, because there are loads of cases where it makes sense.
- Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution Really interesting interview with an Egyptian feminist activist and writer.
- Rape Culture? What Rape Culture?
- How We Justify Shaming, Harassment, and Abuse
- A List of Ways I Have Used Trigger Warnings
- Quinnspiracy Blog – Risky Business Zoe Quinn talks about how anti-feminists have successfully perpetuated a blacklist.
- The Debate Link: Inexplicable Sentiments A North Carolina prosecutor says that for immigration purposes, violence doesn’t count if it’s Latino-on-Latino.
- The health benefits of breastfeeding have been VASTLY exaggerated. Think of how much completely needed trouble, trauma and guilt among mothers has been caused.
- Racism Is Destroying the Right to Vote | Demos
- Stop Comparing The Black Widow SNL Sketch And The Supergirl Trailer | The Mary Sue What would be funny and out of character for Black Widow is fine for Supergirl.
- Veronica Straszheim — “Half of the captions had been written by men, and half by women. When not told who wrote what, the participants judged them almost equally funny….”
- Stop all that reckless breathing! A local Republican legislator worries that people on bikes are destroying the Earth with their exhaling and stuff.
- ‘We must be careful about what we pretend to be’: How tribal cheerleading creates new tribal dogma and changes the tribe to conform to it. Also about what ridiculous poll results really indicate.
- 10 Things Everyone Should Know About Civil Rights Heroine Diane Nash
- Racial segregation was not the unintended effect of benign policies.
- ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: First Convict the Perpetrator. On True And False Rape Accusations
- Think Twice Before Calling the Cops on the Mentally Ill – The Atlantic
- “You mentioned neurodiversity in your blog description – what does the term mean to you?” in The Unit of Caring
- Why you should never, ever play the lottery – The Washington Post What I found most interesting about this was the proposal for “a lottery with no losers” – Prize-Linked Savings. “It’s a system where instead of each person earning interest on their savings, all the interest is pooled together and then raffled off. So in the worst case, people have saved money that they otherwise would have lost on lottery tickets, and in the best they won a nice little cash prize on top of their little nest egg.”
- The nail salon crisis is not about your middle class guilt
- The Debate Link: Neither Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton are “affirmative action picks.” Sheesh!
- One-liner that cracked me up: “My milkshakes bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”
- Sentencing Law and Policy: “Too Many People in Jail? Abolish Bail” “In addition to being unjust and unnecessary, pretrial incarceration can have harmful consequences. Not only do those who are in jail before trial suffer the trauma of confinement, but in comparison with their bailed-out counterparts, they are also more likely to be convicted at trial.”
- Obama Is Not The Foe Of Wall Street He Claims To Be
- Why I Don’t Read The News Anymore | Thing of Things
- Why white kids in Baltimore get more second chances than black kids – Vox I really need to do a cartoon on this topic, because it’s essential.
- Woman Held Hostage Uses Online Pizza Hut Order To Send Messages Asking For Help – Consumerist
I really really like #2, and because I like it so much, I’m going to quote from it:
We’ve had this in the UK since I was a kid, and probably for decades before then.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/premium-bonds#how
#37, the woman using a pizza order to contact 911, is like a flipped version of the urban legend about a woman who called 911 and disguised it as a pizza order. The latter was used as the basis for an anti–domestic violence TV ad earlier this year.
Which, in turn, is going to help ensure that no director ever dares to take on a Wonder Woman movie.
And isn’t Zoe Quinn the last person entitled to complain about blacklists?
I’m pretty sure that actually happened a few months ago. I remember hearing a recording of the call.
That cubic food is weirding me out, and I can’t really explain why.
Presumably because having more than one female lead character in a movie isn’t an option.
Copyleft:
Because…?
Really? Why? A Wonder Woman movie inherently has a single lead character, of course (very different from the Avengers in that way), but that doesn’t mean that there can’t also be major female supporting characters. Look at Fury Road, for an obvious current example.
(ETA: I wrote this reply before reading Daran’s comment, which said essentially the same thing.)
I, uh, suspect the recording you remember hearing a few months ago might actually be the TV ad I mentioned?
At least, Snopes.com describes this as a “legend”, inasmuch as ostensibly there are anonymous reports of this having happened but no direct documentary evidence.
Has anyone been watching 500 Questions on ABC? It’s a trivia game show, but a pretty nice level of trivia: I don’t hear any of the questions and think “it’s impossible someone would know that”, but at the same time I don’t know the answers to plenty of them.
(They keep referring to the folks as “geniuses”, which seems a little odd–they’re all quite smart of course, but the qualifications they give are strange: one guy is a “genius” because he has masters’ degrees in library science and theology, even though many academic librarians, at least, are required to have dual masters’. He was the best contestant so far, though, in my opinion, so it’s not like the qualifications mean much, but…weird!)
The other thing to notice, of course, is what demographics get included in “genius.” So far the contestants have been 4 white guys and 1 black guy.
Huh. I definitely remember hearing it reported as an actual news story, but you’re right, there doesn’t seem to be anything online. Now I’m trying to figure out what I’m actually remembering, since I don’t think it was the TV ad — the conversation I remember wasn’t the same as the one there.
Ruchama, was it this conversation? I remember reading it a few months ago (October apparently), and thought it was a recent event, but it was a guy on Reddit reporting a decade-old call. The transcript is the one I remember, though.
Yes, that was it!
Because it’s not part of a well-rounded diet.
Which is odd, because it’s so clearly part of a square meal.
I’m obsessed with the cubical food thing. The first time I saw it I opened the full image and just stared at it for like 10 minutes, which is weird, ’cause I’m not visual at all.* But I get some sort of intense pleasure from looking at it.
(*Verbal, mostly. It’s kind of a problem in my job, because I talk math at people, and they blink at me and then say, “Could you write that on the board?”)
Yeah, if I verbally described the food cubes to someone, I don’t think it would at all get across how weirdly compelling it is to look at. Especially in the enlarged version.
Has anyone bothered to fact-check Judicial Watch’s latest “findings” on Benghazi? The right-wing media is acting like this is a smoking gun which proves the Obama administration “knew” it wasn’t motivated by the video (even though everyone involved said it was motivated by the video), but the memos seems to fall well within the bounds of the conflicting reports that everyone already knew were going on at the time. Besides, Judicial Watch has a lengthy history of overhyping their findings and pretending that documents say something other than what they actually say.
Thoughts?
I want to read this book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, by Katha Pollitt. This is a link to what I assume is the introduction. Unfortunately, it is formatted as a single paragraph, which makes it a little bit difficult to read, and I didn’t see a PDF link on the page. It’s definitely worth reading, though.
http://fox2now.com/2015/05/07/woman-being-held-hostage-uses-online-pizza-hut-order-to-send-911-hostage-message-2/
This is regarding the pizza issue (not sure if this is what you were thinking of:
The lady put a distress message on her online order.
-Jut
(Sorry for the messy post; sent from my phone.)
I don’t understand the square food thing. You guys have eaten petit fours before? Or those Kit Kat like vanilla cookies?
This idea for how to create more housing in cities with enormously high demand, like San Francisco – basically, open up what are now streets for development into residential or multi-use buildings, turn the sidewalks into European style avenues, and let the free market sort out parking – seems wonderful to me.
I’m guessing you don’t drive and aren’t familiar with San Francisco, then. And sure haven’t tried to drive in San Francisco.
Delivery companies won’t magically shift to narrow trucks. They’ll just take their existing trucks and jam them into smaller streets, blocking the entire way (and not just for cars, but for bicycles and pedestrians). As one of the commenters pointed out, narrowing streets is a lot more complicated in reality than in Photoshop; one of the author’s proposed changes would eliminate a public transit line. Not to mention all the construction and rerouting of infrastructure such as utility lines. The author has cherry-picked some lovely tourist photos that don’t really represent the difficulties of turning an already-dense existing US city into a hipster-friendly version of a “European” city.
ETA: here’s how the “free market” will sort out parking: only rich people will be able to afford it.
Yeah, that’s pretty much the idea. But it’s totally okay, because moral worth is linked to cash flow, so if you can’t afford a parking spot, you clearly don’t deserve one. /sarcasm.
Mythago:
There are several solutions to that problem, including putting some small concrete posts in the road which limit the width of vehicles that can be driven, and fines for trucks wider than (X) which use a too-narrow-for-trucks road.
None of these things are impossible to accomplish. Developers can be made to pick up the expense as part of the cost of building (which is already how things like changes to utility lines are paid for, often, so it’s hardly impossible).
KellyK:
You’re right, of course, that it hurts the interests of car owners (some of whom are poor) to change from the status quo to less car-centric approaches. But the status quo hurts the interests of non-car-owners (some of whom are poor), who have to pay higher rents for the benefit of car owners. I don’t understand why we should privilege the interests of poor people who own cars, above the interests of poor people who don’t own cars.
(It’s also possible that the increased costs of parking a car will be offset by lower average rents, so car owners who pay rent won’t actually lose out, on average. I’m not saying that would definitely happen, but there’s no reason it couldn’t.)
You know what I liked best about “Avengers: Age of Ultron”? Ultron’s face. The animation of the face was endlessly fascinating – maybe too fascinating, since I often paid more attention to the face than to the dialog – and solves the “has a metal face so is totally inexpressive” problem that metal-face characters often have. (They solved it with Iron Man by doing the “in the helmet” shots.)
I liked the face, but I was distracted by trying to figure out what kind of engineering was needed to make metal do that…
mythago:
Did you click through to the full image? There’s something mesmerizing about it that isn’t really captured by the cutout, I think. (I’ve eaten–and in fact made–petit fours before, and I have kind of a similar but less intense reaction to them too, actually.) (Hmm. Petit fours. Perhaps I need to do some baking tomorrow.)
I think it’s an early form of the liquid metal that they will eventually make the T-1000 out of.
There are several solutions to that problem, including putting some small concrete posts in the road which limit the width of vehicles that can be driven, and fines for trucks wider than (X) which use a too-narrow-for-trucks road.
Ah. So the residents won’t be allowed to have cars either, or to park where they live? Emergency vehicles will have to be downsized, and I assume that San Francisco’s overflowing public purse will pay for that?
“It isn’t impossible” is not a real argument. Anything is possible, in the sense of being something that, in theory, can be done, because it is within the realm of current human potential, unlike (say) a viable Jupiter orbital colony.
And I take it I am correct that you don’t own a car, since you see no problem in forcing the poor out of cars (if they have them) and into public transit, which as a childfree person who doesn’t have a job that makes car ownership a requirement and can get anywhere he likes on those route TriMet cares to keep reliable, I guess is no skin off your nose.
Yeah, as someone who lives near SF, I’m with Mythago on this one.
Of course residents are allowed to have cars. (?) But I imagine that the narrowed streets would not allow any long-term parking, so car owners would have to find parking somewhere other than directly in front of their building. Which is how people in NYC have been doing it for generations, btw.
As I pointed out in the post you’re responding to, not only is reworking infrastructure “possible” in order to accommodate construction, it is routine. It happens literally all the time.
Similarly, San Francisco is already purchasing new emergency vehicles – as far as I can tell, they bought 20 in 2014 alone, and that was in a year when funding was very tight. (As I understand it, SF is having an ambulance shortage, and – regardless of if any narrow streets are built – it’s not feasible for SF to stop buying new ambulances.) In a city as large as SF, or NYC, or any other that should consider this proposal, new emergency vehicles are routinely bought every year. There’s no reason, if this proposal ever happened, that the city couldn’t gradually buy a handful of narrow-design vehicles. And emergency vehicles should be designed to work with the spaces people live, not vice versa.
Yes, I do get around on a bike and on Tri-Met, and I don’t drive (although my household owns 3 cars). I don’t think that’s relevant, unless you’re prepared to also argue that no car owners can legitimately take the pro-car side of this issue.
I know parents who don’t own cars, both in NYC and in Portland – some people manage it, although I imagine it’s a lot easier in a major city with public transit. But it’s undeniable that having a car is an ENORMOUS convenience for parents, and some parents have lives that would be impossible to manage without cars.
That said, no one is advocating kicking cars out of SF, or NYC, or any other city. What’s being suggested is that not EVERY SINGLE BLOCK should be designed to privilege the interests of car owners above everyone else.
Finally, I do see the problem with “forcing the poor” to have to pay more for parking. The difference is, I also see the problem with forcing poor people – who are, by the way, less likely to own cars than rich people – to pay higher rents and taxes so that car-owners can have a ridiculous amount of the city reserved for their use.
It’s also true that nearly anyone in any city that has higher housing demand than housing supply would benefit from increasing the city’s housing stock. Lower average rents and a larger tax base are good for everyone (but are especially good for people who rely on government services).
Daran:
That’s interesting. If you know, is that something that you have alongside a US-style lottery, or instead of a US-style lottery? And (again, if you know) are the premium bonds popular?
According to the key, purple cabbage and red cabbage are different things.
Did they build towers out of the food cubes later, I wonder?
This is a valid point, definitely. (Also, my prior comment was unfairly snarky.)
Which is how people in NYC have been doing it for generations, btw.
NYC is a large city. SF is a large city. Therefore, for purposes of determining the feasibility of urban planning, what works in NYC will work the same way in SF.
Seriously?
Yes, “reworking infrastructure” happens all the time. To assume that therefore it’s practical and sensible to rework infrastructure at this level is like saying “Hey, mythago, people heal from cuts all the time; therefore I don’t know why you’re concerned about my opening up your chainsaw with this abdomen.” Paper cut, gaping abdominal wound, both are cuts and it is possible to heal from the latter, right?
I don’t think that’s relevant
You don’t think that lived experiences and ‘how would this affect me’ are not relevant to both your understanding and the weight of your opinion? This is the one issue where you think “I don’t know and it doesn’t affect me anyway” has zero impact on the value of an opinion? Okay.
What’s being suggested is that not EVERY SINGLE BLOCK should be designed to privilege the interests of car owners above everyone else.
Amp, you know, I really hate it when you stoop to this kind of dishonest strawmanning bullshit. I thought better of you.
mythago:
“Ah. So the residents won’t be allowed to have cars either, or to park where they live? ”
“Paper cut, gaping abdominal wound, both are cuts and it is possible to heal from the latter, right?”
“Amp, you know, I really hate it when you stoop to this kind of dishonest strawmanning bullshit. I thought better of you.”
Yes, the hyperbole should stay strictly one-sided. That is a totally reasonable demand.
Oh, also about the emergency vehicles…
I really don’t know any more about it than you can read at the link I provided, or on the wiki. We do have a National Lottery which only began in 1994, fairly recent compared with other nations’ lotteries. We also have “the Pools“, (“football” here refering to the game of Soccer). Do you have anything similar in the US?
The Republic of Ireland has just voted in a referendum to legalise SSM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-fourth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_%28Marriage_Equality%29_Bill_2015
As I understand it, people do have betting pools here on the Super Bowl and the like, but they are technically illegal and thus tend to be informal and small-scale. But I’m only going by what I’ve heard, I’ve never participated in a pool myself.
And that’s wonderful news about Ireland.
There’s also legal betting on horse races in some states.
Is everyone watching Steven Universe? You really should be.
It’s a surprisingly emotionally deep science-fiction ‘magical girl’ world seen entirely through the eyes of Steven, a ~10 year old boy. He’s raised by his magical warrior guardians, the “Crystal Gems,” Garnet, Amythest, and Pearl. His mother, Rose Quartz, was also a Crystal Gem, but gave up her physical form to bring him into the world. His dad, Greg Universe, owns the local car wash and tries to be emotionally supportive and a good influence while being deeply uncomfortable with “all that magic stuff.”
Also it’s a musical. A fucking fantastic musical. It’s possible that I’ve had songs from Steven Universe stuck in my head pretty solidly for the past week or so.
And both the cast and the voice actors are racially diverse.
And it’s the first show created for Cartoon Network by a woman: Rebecca Sugar, who is amazing.
Oh, and the voice talent! There are characters voiced by Nicki Minaj, Estelle, Sinbad, Aimee Mann, and Joel Hodgson from MST3K
The nice thing about the entire show being from Steven’s perspective is that, though it does deal with some adult situations, they’re all seen through the eyes of a kid. So the backstory and emotional complexity develops organically and gently.
—Myca
There are a TON of hidden costs in the housing arena. When you try to get one result (“make it possible for poor people to stay here!”) you often get other results (“make it so that there’s a black market in rent-stabilized or low-income housing, which privileges well-connected folks who work under the table and don’t show a lot of income on paper, or who don’t work at all because their parents give them cash.”)
I’ve worked with a variety of places to try to set up selection criteria. It’s some of the most complicated work I do.
If we make yearly income-qualified rentals we end up selecting for under-the-table workers. And we have a lot of people who stay there as long as they can even if they could leave, because the jump up is so high.
So then there was a movement to sell homes based on qualifcation at time of purchase. Which is all well and good. But then it turns out that we often end up selecting for folks with rich parents, who will deliberately keep incomes low, buy a house, and then raise incomes. And they stay in there for as long as they can, which is to say that they basically “win the lottery” because they have HUGE income gains. So we have these heavily-subsidized homes bought for fractions of market value which, five years later, have people with a couple of Volvos and yearly Florida vacations, who don’t plan to leave for 30 years. Oops.
To demonstrate how hard it is, who would you give those to?
1) Bob, who is poor and can’t even come close to affording it at market rate. Putting Bob there requires a TON of subsidies. If you rent it to him, Bob has no incentive to make more money (because he’ll get kicked out.) If you sell it to him, you may find in a year or two that you have tied up $150k/resident in public money to give a cheap apartment to someone that could afford market rate.
2) Charlene, who is totally loaded and will pay top dollar for the unit. Putting Charlene there allows the city to build more housing in general, saving money to help Bob in some other way. Also, because Charlene is rich and pays at least market rate, the rent/buy issue doesn’t apply. But good luck getting that to pass politically.
3) Daniel, who is middle class and who wants to stay in the city, but who–if the apartment was not available–would move somewhere else and be perfectly happy there. Smaller subsidies, to be sure, but smaller benefit. And the same rent/buy problems as Bob.
Not simple, at all.
#19 Richard Jeffrey Newman
Thanks for the link to the pro-abortion essay. It reads quite well, even without paragraphing. I suspect that the mysterious “31”‘s mark the paragraphs.
It all makes a lot of sense, but I’ll add that anyone who thinks life begins at conception should also be energetically and enthusiastically anti-war, but most of them aren’t.
I wonder what sorts of compromises are involved in making ambulances narrower. Would it mostly be a matter of making them longer so that everything fits? Would they no longer be able to carry certain types of machines, or have to stock fewer drugs? Would they have more trouble carrying “supersize” people? Maybe we could have every other street be narrow instead of every street, so that regular ambulances would still have good access?
I’ve never lived in San Francisco, but my understanding of the reasons why rent is so high in many cities, mostly based on Matt Yglesias’ writing, is all the zoning that keeps buildings above a certain height, or even any type of multi-family homes, out of large areas. If it’s not politically viable to lift any of these restrictions, I wonder if it would be less or more politically viable to narrow some streets. Maybe it would be ideal to do both, but it seems like you would decrease the rent more by lifting those other restrictions.
Increasing housing stock enough to lower rents through supply and demand would have the advantage of sidestepping the subsidy problems that gin-and-whiskey mentions.
In re the Irish vote to approve marriage equality, you can find some nice collections around the Web of photos of people returning home to Ireland to vote (citizens overseas for less than 18 months were eligible to vote, but had to show up in person to do so, generally speaking).
closetpuritan, as far as height/density restrictions etc go, have you been following the creation of the so-called “Density Creep Neighborhood Alliance” near Toronto, which is opposing (gasp!) townhouses with units that would sell for only $500,000, as opposed to the usual $1 million-plus for detached homes in the Toronto area?
It’s unlikely that supply and demand would ever really solve this problem, because there are a LOT of people who want to live in SF and who make a LOT more money than the folks you’re trying to protect. Just like raising the minimum wage will pull some people off their couch, lowering the SF housing prices will induce those folks to move to SF.
The goal of “give people housing so they are not homeless” and “help people live precisely where they want to live” are pretty strongly at odds, especially if there is a big location/price differential. You can house twice as many people for the same money if you don’t put them where all the rich folks want to live. You can’t just look at the downsides of moving elsewhere, you have to look at the much larger # of people who you can serve.
Near Boston, there are some tony suburbs like Newton, which have almost no affordable housing. But if you add a 45 minute commute, you can end up in a very, very, cheap area. And a lot of people have that commute already and we seem to think it’s OK: the solution, then, would probably be to build affordable housing somewhere other than Newton. And so on.
Similarly, the solution would probably be to build housing where people want to live, but to build AFFORDABLE housing where prices are, relatively speaking, a bit lower. The interesting thing is that if you generically lower the prices in downtown SF you will probably get some people moving there from adjacent areas (they wanted to live downtown but couldn’t afford it) which will open up markets in those suburbs, and so on.
Consent, and tea. A metaphor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGoWLWS4-kU
Grace
https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/on-consent-as-a-felt-sense/
https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/mapping-the-grey-area-of-sexual-experience-consent-compulsory-sexuality-and-sex-normativity/
See also The Just City, in which Athena attempts to create Plato’s Republic in the real world. There’s a good bit about consent.
I’ve been reading some Zombie Nation today – Zombie Nation, for those who don’t recall, is the Puppy nominee for “Best Graphic Story” this year.
This is as purely mediocre a comic as I’ve ever read. The best this comic ever gets is “that was okay,” and at a craft level it’s atrocious. Take a look at this episode, for example:
On the good side: 1) He’s got some basic Photoshop skills, and employes textures, gradients, and gloss effects so that he winds up with a shiny surface. Not my cup of tea, but many readers genuinely enjoy that approach. 2) The figure drawing isn’t bad. 3) And it looks like he actually cared about drawing that monster, and the result is fun to look at.
On the bad side: 1) He doesn’t know how to place word balloons so that they’re read in the correct order. The script only makes sense if “I’m hoping the rule where the two prettiest people always live compensates for that” is a direct response to “What about no splitting up”? in the previous panel. But because he didn’t know how to put his word balloons in the right order, there’s either one or two word balloons between those two, and by the time I got to “compensates for that” I had to sit for a minute and figure out what the hell “that” was referring to.
This isn’t a “Barry is a comics snob and only likes Chris Ware comics where someone is depressed for eighty panels then goes to sleep” thing; being able to put your word balloons in the right order is a matter of basic craftmanship. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, as any cartoonist could tell you, but it’s reasonable to think that the person the Puppies apparently think is the best cartoonist of 2014 should be able to manage it.
2) He didn’t bother to draw the figures in panel 3; he just cut-and-pasted the figures from panel 1 and reused them. If you read further, he does this a LOT; for instance, in the very next strip, there are seven figures but he actually only drew three figures. Then, he reuses those same figures AGAIN in the strip after that. Oh, and the monster’s tentacles never move, because he also just cut-and-pasted those from panel to panel.
This is lazy cartooning. And it’s crappy work. The reason a cartoonist like Jeff Smith – or, for that matter, ANY of the other Hugo nominees in this category this year – doesn’t constantly repeat figures is because static figures aren’t as expressive as figures that move and react and change body language in response to what’s going on around them.
3) The entire premise of this episode is swiped from the movie Scream, without even a nod to the original.
4) This is a comic with absolutely no ambition. Not only does it not want to be anything more than a silly gag comic, it doesn’t even try to be an especially well-done silly gag comic.
**************************************
None of which is that big a deal. This is an amateur webcomic, and if he and his readers have fun with it, then it’s all cool. Not every work needs to be of professional quality, and not every work needs to try to be great. When I first looked at Zombie Nation (without reading it), I thought it looked like an okay webcomic (although it didn’t do very well when I actually read it). The cartoonist has talent, and if he actually put some time and effort in he might produce something better.
But nominating Zombie Nation as one of the five best sf/f comics of the year is ludicrous. It shows either a complete ignorance of the field, or an actual contempt for the little things like craft, competence, and quality.
On Twitter, the cartoonist mentioned that he’s pals with Brad Torgersen, which explains how this strip got nominated. But this isn’t supposed to be an award for “best at being pals with Brad Torgersen.” Using the Hugo Awards for that purpose is nepotism, and shows what’s so wrong with Slates. It’s also completely at odds with what Torgersen has claimed the Sad Puppies stand for.
Finally, I’m bothered that some other comic book – a book that was probably created by people who are far more accomplished than the “Zombie Nation” cartoonist, who have put more work in, and who have at least mastered the basics of the craft – was knocked off the list by the Sad Puppies.
4. It passes the Bechtel test.
I noticed that. Hey, I actually noticed something “good” or “bad” in how a comic was drawn. Yay me!
gin-and-whiskey:
I wasn’t intending to talk specifically about downtown San Francisco, but while I did switch to “in many cities” I was somewhat sloppy–in my head I was including the surrounding areas, not just the cities proper. (In my defense, it’s something I’ve seen a lot of people do, applied to a lot smaller cities than San Francisco–but I can see why it was unclear.)
Anyway, I’m not the expert here, Matt Yglesias is, but this seems reasonable to me, as a sample of the type of argument he makes:
He also argues that luxury neighborhoods have a role to play, though, at least in preventing gentrification:
Harlequin: I hadn’t seen that, but it doesn’t surprise me. NIMBY NIMBY NIMBY! I’ve got mine, Jack!
Steven Schwartz (not the composer of “Wicked” and “Pippen,” but someone else, I assume) wrote about the problem of reading the Hugo-nominated works this year:
The composer’s Stephen not Steven, so unless he’s deliberately trying to hide his identity, it’s definitely someone else :D
(Now I’m remembering the Daily Show Even Stephven segments with Colbert and Carell. …And now Steven has ceased to seem like a real word! It’s fun when that happens.)
Well worth reading: I fooled millions into thinking chocolate helps weight loss. Science journalist + documentary filmmakers do a real but fatally flawed study on only a few people, manage to get their results into real news sources.
@34, “Obama is not the foe of Wall Street he claims to be.”
What? This is news? People were telling you all to look at his list of campaign contributors in 2008. But when it was brought up then all people did was condemn the information based on who was bringing it to light.
Ron, many people have been saying for years, on both the left and the right, that Obama is too close to Wall Street interests. The fact that it’s been said before doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to say it again. :-)
So if a right-wing candidate was supported even more by Wall Steet than Obama is, judging by contributions – or more to the point, was supported much more than their Democratic opponent – would that change your idea of which candidate you should support?
Nancy @42:
1) You’d be surprised.
2) It only takes one person to stop an abortion. But it takes two to stop a war. If someone attacks you – or attacks people you have a vested interest in protecting from harm (say, family, or a religious/ethnic minority, or a democracy threatened by a tolitarian state), you have the choice of either protecting yourself or them or letting you/them die. This is also known as “The bad guys get a vote too.”
At a minimum, the pregnant person, a technician or nurse or two, someone at a front desk, a physician, possibly a pharmacist. So long as the pregnant person has the money, the access, and the time to do so. And lives in the right country. In the maximum, a change of government or in the minds of the greater populace. So, not so different, really.
Self-defense from an actual attack, and “we have to protect ______,” seem to me to be very different things. If Iraq lands its navy in Florida and starts shelling Miami, we have no choice, and it’s a clear-cut situation.
But the same isn’t true of situations where someone “attacks people you have a vested interest in protecting.” Because, sadly, that goes on all the time, and sometimes we respond with a military intervention and sometimes we don’t, and the difference often has to with US interests that aren’t as altruistic as what you’re describing here, and often the people we’re protecting also have a lot of blood on their hands that we pretend we don’t see. Furthermore, very often we can’t accomplish what the pro-war people claimed we would accomplish, because the US military isn’t a magic wand we can wave to solve other countries’ conflicts; and it often isn’t clear that our intervention didn’t cause more deaths than would have occurred otherwise.
Basically, you’re conflating wars of self-defense with wars of choice, and pretending they’re the same thing. Which is, I think, exactly the approach Nancy was criticizing. A consistent pro-life ethic would include a difficult-to-overcome presumption against military interventions. In the US, however, religious conservatives seem eager to use the army, and often criticize Obama for not being bellicose enough in his approach to foreign policy (e.g., claims that it’s wrong to negotiate with Iran).
Mookie – I’m talking about the will to make war or keep the peace, not the actual logistics.
Amp # 58:
I totally agree with your first two paragraphs. The third one I’ll take issue with.
First, I would not conflate someone attacking my person or my family with someone attacking a country I have interests in. What I was trying to do is to show that there’s a range of things that can be perceived as a threat. You are quite right in that different threats present us with different ranges of choices in how to respond. You are also quite right in that there’s a mix of motivations, some not so morally pure as others. I would go further than that as well – if you have a situation such as dealing with Iran threatening to invade another country (directly or by proxy) or building an atomic bomb, some people will have quite altruistic reasons for opposing it with force while others will have much less altruistic ones. Yet together they may form a majority.
I think this is a misrepresentation of the situation. First, I would not say that religious conservatives are eager to use the army, nor would I say that they think it’s wrong to negotiate with Iran. I would say that they are eager to get a particular end result, and disagree vehemently with Obama’s tactics and policies. The issue of negotiating with Iran is a good case in point. The general viewpoint is that the sanctions have Iran in a weakened position, but that the deal Obama proposes gets far too little in concessions from Iran in exchange for relaxing those sanctions. It’s not negotiating with Iran (vs., say, marching in the Army) that they oppose – it’s the particular conditions of this deal that they find wrong.
I also think that you are far too narrow in your outlook on this. There are a LOT more people than religious conservatives that oppose the deal that Pres. Obama is proposing; IIRC it’s actually bi-partisan as well.
Since I can’t vent directly:
Imagine you’re my opposing counsel. You’ve been served with an answer. It’s due in 23 days.
I email you on day 20. It’s not ready, but you don’t ask for an extension because you’re too highfalutin’ of an attorney.
Day 23 comes and goes.
On day 26, I make a phone call “hey, you seem to have missed something.” You don’t apologize or thank me, because you’re too highfalutin’ of an attorney. But you agree to “file it this week.”
The week comes and goes. At the end of the court day on Friday,as the court closes–it is clear it can’t be filed–I default you. You don’t file.
You probably hear about it from the clerk (slimy town) and email me “here’s the unsigned Word copy of the answer that I’ll file” a couple of hours later. You don’t mention that you missed the deadline, or that “…which I’ll file” is not the same as “which I filed.”
I say “OK. I already defaulted you for failing to file in the extended time as promised, but I’ll take care of removing the default on Monday AM and accept it as filed.”
Do you respond:
“Sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“OK.”
“What an odd way to practice law!”
Grrr.
In my jurisdiction, I don’t have to “default” anyone. Default just is. If you do not timely answer, you are in default.
This does not stop judges from acting like I am a meanie because I won’t acknowledge a late answer as timely without a proper motion granted by the court. They REALLY act like I’m a meanie when I point out that “I didn’t hire a lawyer or answer the complaint” is, as a matter of law in my jurisdiction, not “excusable neglect.”
I try to explain that I can decline to file a response in opposition, but I cannot just declare that something which our supreme court has identified as not being excusable neglect is, somehow in this case, excusable neglect. Nor can I just declare that something which is default as a matter of law somehow ceases to be default just because I say so.
In most courts, one extension is granted as a matter of law if the other side just asks. Another can be granted by my consent. A third one requires court permission. You’d be AMAZED how often I have to explain to people why I can’t grant them a third extension.
The whole Christina Hoff Sommers might not have been censorship, but this seems to be getting awfully close to it.
G&W,
So what are the pros/cons of removing the default? Is it something a judge would often do anyway, or can doing that sort of thing be of benefit to you or your client?
Thanks, desipis. That was important to read.
there seem to be three camps here:
1) those who think that the title 9 suit was/is OK, though personally I suspect that group is not really posting on this blog**;
2) those who think that this is not OK at all, but who don’t buy into the general “these rules are really bad, and the outcomes are both predictable and unacceptable” line; and
3) Those who have been actively saying “these rules are going to be a problem” for a while, and are now saying “no shit, no surprise.”
As a Group 3 member, I’d like to take this opportunity to invite any and all Group 2 folks to switch to Group 3. Or at the very least, next time you’re taking the “those fears are unfounded, extreme, and/or speculative” line against a Group 3 member, please do your best to remember this one.
**There are certainly quite a few people who seem to think this was OK. Someone published that student’s article. Someone, in all likelihood, taught and/or encouraged them (in college, grad school, or through other writings) to take this position. They probably believe they’re doing the right thing, social justice wise; they may well have been instructed that they’re doing the right thing. Out of curiosity, what term would folks use to describe that group of folks?
I agree, as far as I can make out from reading articles on other websites about that article. (Am I the only one here without a subscription to the Chronicle of Higher Education?)
No, you aren’t.
In other “we told you so this was so obvious why wouldn’t you believe us” news, this is happening.
https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/brandeis.pdf
It’s written by the plaintiff’s lawyer, so you have to read with a grain of salt. But as a general rule, when reading legal documents you can *probably* take as gospel anything that references the contents of something else of record. There are lawyers out there where you can’t (they generally represent really sympathetic clients against really unsympathetic opponents which lets them get away with a lot more than they should), but they’re thankfully rare. Since this complaint relates to matters of (pseudo) record, that means that you can probably assume that the majority of the complaint is accurate, and that shenanigans, if any, are of the “lie by omission” variety.
I’m curious about how the case is going, but to find out I’d have to pay a pittance to PACER and I’m not willing to do so.
It should be noted- the things which the complaint allege were identified as violating affirmative consent (touching the accuser’s groin during a successful sexual proposition, kissing the accuser to wake him) appear to actually, legitimately violate affirmative consent. Which is good, from an outsider’s perspective, because it allows the affirmative consent standard itself to be placed on trial.
I particularly like the numbered paragraph “Justice Brandeis would be appalled.” I would NEVER put something like that in one of my pleadings, but it always cracks me up when someone else does it. By law, counsel for the university should affirm, deny, or deny that allegation for want of knowledge.
I don’t have one either. I’m guessing the “key” part in that URL was temporary. Here’s a couple of other links that report on the Chronicle article in detail: Reason & FIRE.
The most amusing allegation in that complaint is this one:
Another perspective on the Laura Kipnis case: http://dailynous.com/2015/05/30/northwestern-and-title-ix-whats-going-on/. I have to read it again, but thought people might be interested to know about it.
Man, what a mess.
If only we had some sort of well-established forum available to all people, which used a preponderance standard, and which had a longstanding reputation for excellent procedures designed to put the charges and facts out in the open and get at the truth of what actually happened. That would surely improve things.
Oh well. We can only dream.
Anyway, as for that article.
What the author doesn’t seem to understand is that when you give someone in authority the power to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable speech by classification (“legal intellectual disagreement” versus “illegal retaliation,”) it tends to go very badly.
You can have absolute secrecy, if you’d like (such as a grand jury, which has its own entirely-unsurprising set of problems as a result) But you can’t have it for one side only, it never works well.
Words can indeed have all sorts of effects. But of course, “retaliation” in an ordinary context is something which happens by the perpetrator, or someone requested by them. If I say Amp can’t draw and he says “oh yeah, well you’re worse than I am,” that’s retaliation. If someone else says “dude, that’s pretty funny you’re insulting his cartoons; you can’t even remember how many sides a triangle has” that isn’t retaliation at all. Defining it as if it is, would be a problem. Is a problem.
The answer is properly “if so, then it is appropriate to question Title 9” and not “therefore it is just fine.”
If you read the Kipnis articles, who believes that the article should be “taken seriously” as a specific incidence of illegal behavior? If that’s “taken seriously” then should everything else also be taken seriously?
You wouldn’t normally find me on the side of punishment for this at all, of course. And so you wouldn’t expect to find me supporting punishment for the person who wrote about Kipnis.
But I’m starting to lean that way. Because the “This is fucking ridiculous!” line isn’t working, and there still seems to be a strong left-liberal attempt to minimize the content-based-enforcement aspect.
So the main practical choice remaining seems to be “OK, everyone in line to be sauced, goose and gander alike.” As in, let’s report everything. Ever. Against everyone.
It seems like it is becoming increasingly necessary to force these folks to punish everyone (especially including folks they like or might otherwise support) until they accept that the scheme is bullshit and reverse it.
Please bring a title 9 suit against the students, Kipnis, because it’s needed–not to prevent that student’s free speech, but to protect the free speech of everyone else.
Similarly, I have come to think the school should kick this feminist group off campus–preferably after a secret hearing, at which they can’t testify. Not because the group has actually done anything over the line (at least in my opinion), but because it’s important that we recall the distinction between actions and horrible speech; between violence and discussing violence. If you take action against folks for saying things, you should sure as hell take action for doing things.
If it means that every social justivist* who steps over the line with extreme language or group characteristics gets officially reported as “harassing” or “offensive,” so be it.
If it means that teachers are going to get accused of hate speech and dragged before boards of inquiry for, saying, making sweeping comments about majority groups (the truth of the claim being irrelevant w/r/t such things), well, there are few better ways to expose a hidden content-based system. It’s a lot harder to maintain one of those ridiculous “no gender based commentary which upsets people” codes when every use of “mansplaining” gets reported for discipline.
Free speech is getting co-opted by a bunch of nuts. I think it’s time to reclaim it.
G&W, are you joking?
This Huff Post article gives more of what the complaining students are saying. There are actually substantial areas in which the complaining students and Kipnis agree. There seems to be widespread agreement that the system needs to be more transparent, and that the way Kipnis was treated (specifically, the refusal to let her know what she had been accused of, and the rule against recording interviews) was upsetting and wrong. I certainly agree with that.
I also agree with Joe Cohn of FIRE about this:
I haven’t looked into this case in depth, but in general, it’s inevitable that whenever there is a system by which charges may be brought against people, there will be occasions when charges that are obviously not merited are brought. There needs to be, in any system, a way for obviously merit-less charges to be quickly dismissed.
Patrick:
Patrick, I think that these sort of abuses (taking Kipnis at her word) are the inevitable result of having any sort of system in which people – or the state – can make charges and seek redress or justice.
But you seem to imply that I’ve denied this was the case. Could you do me a favor, and link and quote the specific words I said denying that it would ever happen that charges that shouldn’t have been made, would ever be made?
Or if you’re referring to something someone here on “Alas” other than me has said, could you link to and quote those specific words, please?
Wait, what are you acknowledging as “abuse” in this scenario? It all looks like a completely straight forward application of affirmative consent rules to me. I’ll be happy to dig up quotes, both from you or this forum if necessary and from other, worse places (say, Crooked Timber), but I’m more surprised that we have common ground.
To be crystal clear as to my position- I think that the university’s conclusion was likely correct under your typical affirmative consent policy. I think the abuse isn’t in improperly administering a rule- it’s the rule itself that’s improper.
Yes. No. It depends.
I would like this scary trend to go away, and I do not think that it would hold up if people started taking the laws very literally. I don’t support writing laws that define “kissing your partner to wake them up” as sexual assault, but the best way to make them stop may be to start reporting every single incident. I don’t support restrictions on speech at all, but it is looking like the best way to fight them is less likely to be “convince the other side that they laws are bad” and more likely to be “constantly reporting their speech under their own stupid laws, and forcing them to deal with it, until the laws go away.”
So what? They still say “The basis of our complaint was that she said things that were false and she refused to correct them. I’m not even sure I support the ban on faculty-student relationships.”
At heart they are trying to use the university to censor and suppress and punish speech about facts because they assert the speech is “false.” Even though it’s not about them. Which is appalling.
Eh. I call bullshit. Had people actually wanted it to be transparent, they’d not have brought more complaints about the purported breach of transparency. This looks like backpedaling to the extreme. I trust that “agreement” not a whit, but I could be wrong; I suppose we’ll see how many “open up the title 9 process!” articles those folks write in the next year or three.
Ye.s But not all systems are the same.
For example, a system which assures people of confidentiality makes it more likely that unmerited charges will be brought. Same for a system which protects against any repercussions, or counterclaims. Same for one which grants special protections to the accuser w/r/t cross-examination, investigation, etc.
Which is what we have here, of course.
I suppose yes, though I don’t trust these folks to set that up fairly either.
Sure, you don’t dispute the concept that “all systems can have errors and abuses” But of course you don’t; those are pretty much truisms for anyone educated and intelligent.
Unless I’ve misunderstood you, you have disputed the assertion that the title 9 system was/is especially and inappropriately susceptible to errors and abuses. You’ve argued with me quite a few times on the subject, IIRC, taking a position which I might most easily sum up as “the problems, to the degree that they may exist, won’t be bad, and the fears are overblown.”
Retreating to “well, I never said it was perfect” is true (I’d be surprised if you ever said that) but fails to recognize that divide, especially in response to the “see? Fears not overblown!” claims being made here.
From the Huffington Post article:
I think this makes it clear, how when you have a private organisation controlling an investigation, who the process is going to be set up to protect and what principles will drive it. The answers certainly aren’t “the victims” and “truth and justice”.
Here‘s a copy of the article from the Author’s own website, not behind a paywall. (Hat tip: Some guy called Jeremy Kaufmann)